The Mocking Sun
by Watermellynn
Summary: Gemma reflects after Kartik's death. Takes place after the Sweet Far Thing.


a/n: I wrote this a really long tima ago and finally decided to post it. I wrote it immediantly after The Sweet Far Thing came out a couple years back.

I should've known better.

Really, I should've.

Our fates, from the very beginning, were different. He was from the Rakshana and I the order: two organizations whose sole goal is to have power over the other. They've been warring for years and it didn't seem like the fight would end anytime soon.

Despite the harsh feelings on each side we were able to – slowly albeit – become friends. Soon that friendship that we were to never have started turned into something amazingly wonderful. The love we shared, I am quite, sure few have ever been lucky enough to feel. It shone more brilliantly than ten suns on their best day. With a connection as strong as ours I was convinced, like the sun, others would revolve around it. The obstacles, the people in our way would reshape and shift to fit into the universe in which we were the center of. I was certain that we would prevail; just as others centuries ago were certain that the earth was the center of the universe. But I, like them, soon found out that we were not the center of the universe. We were not the sun. Instead we were a small and distant planet that must find its place among the others or cease to exist at all.

We were insignificant.

Nothing revolved around us. No obstacles, no people reshaped or shifted in a way that would best fit us. We had to obey the powerful sun ( that I had so wished was Kartik and I) or suffer the consequences.

I should've known.

We were to follow different paths, you see. That is what was always intended. These trails, we realized, led in opposite directions. They were shadowed in gloom and had the unmistakable air of rancid misery. They were nothing like the path we followed before that was lit brightly by cascading stars and lined with blissful happiness.

Maybe it was because we knew what we were missing – because we had that forbidden taste of perfection – that we could not stand to follow our designated paths for very long.

And so, we forced our fates to become intertwined. We returned to that indescribable, inexhaustible happiness. We returned to the sheer contentment that came with simply being in each other's presence. Everything was perfect.

I should've known.

Along the path that we ourselves created were signs warning us of the danger. There were signs telling us, commanding us, to go back to how things were – to how things were supposed to be.

I scarcely noticed the signs.

The path we took together became difficult to navigate at times. An unruly planet that did not know it place, we refused to let anything stop us.

We were convinced that nothing could ever harm a love as pure as ours – not if the universe and the sun who ruled it were righteous and fair.

The sun, it turned out, was not righteous and fair.

(I should've known this. The sun wasn't fair to my mother or to dear Pippa.)

It demanded order. And since we refused to follow it by remaining together he got his way be eliminating my love.

By doing this, the sun got the order he so desperately craved. By killing him, he made sure that the path he laid in front of me – the path I was supposed to take and didn't – would be the one I'd have to return to. It was a path I was supposed to travel alone. I was never supposed to be with him; and now that he's dead I no longer can.

The sun is cruel. But again I should have known this.

Kartik.

I miss you so.

And even though you shall never return to it, I continue to walk the path we once tread together, hand and hand.

I should have known better.

Really, I should've.

But now, looking back, I realize that I did know and that I just didn't want to acknowledge it. I saw the signs, I knew what the sun was like but I foolishly dismissed them.

The entire universe was against us, yet I chose to ignore it.

And as the sunlight pours though the window, I feel my face form an ugly scowl. I quickly move across the room and close the drapes.

I can no longer stand the sun. It mocks me.

A/N: So whatcha think? Comments make me extremely happy :)


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